He who Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

From McMurphy's arrival to Nurse Ratched's ward, up to his death, several changes in the other patients occurred. Most evident is Chief Bromdem's transformation from a delusional schizophrenic with no confidence to a "Big" free man. This is all due to the rehabilitation that McMurphy induced in the patients with his uprising towards Ratched's abusive power. Kesey suggests that even selfless beings like Bromden can take control of themselves and liberate themselves from others (mostly society) grinding and crushing.

In the beginning of One Few Over the Cuckoo's Nest Bromdem was overwhelmed by a poor mental state therefore he was hid by the fog. He was almost invisible and had no personality, but he was satisfied being almost no one. Even though he was physically big, a war veteran and football player, Bromden convinced himself he was extremely weak because of others oppression over him. As McMurphy begins to "pull out patients out of the fog" even the Chief takes a stand and lifted himself out of it. "No. That's not the truth. I lifted myself." (page 123). Slowly the Chief got ahold of his own voice and began to use it. He was no longer the pusillanimous automaton that simply lived. He began to build himself towards the Big Chief.

Bromden developed his own individuality as he saw McMurphy taking a stand against the Black Boy's and the Nurse's authority. He had the initiative to fight alongside McMurphy and eventually defeated the control that insanity imposed over him. "It's fogging a little, but I won't slip off and hide in it. No… never again…" (page 248) said Bromden as he realized he would hide no more. McMurphy inspired courage and determination in Bromden throughout rebellious actions that ended up instigating him the need of freedom. McMurphy was a hero and a savior for the patients after sacrificing his own health so Bromden killed him to finally give him rest and freedom. Bromdem's transformation from being almost invisible to being a hero similar to McMurphy is evident, but he is certainly more than that. It is up to one to challenge authority and control to find freedom even though sometimes a savior is needed to ignite an insurrection. Kesey portrays a structure like any society where repression must be fought because those who enforce authority are just as sane and mortal as those who obey.

Executioners

Women are depicted in a harsh and recriminating way In One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: they deprive men from almost everything. Personally, I know a man who I believe has been unmanned by a woman, much like many of the patients in Nurse Ratched's ward. This man goes "cuckoo" most of the time and deviates from that, but occasionally, when he is unsexed and emasculated, he reacts. Unfortunately he always fails and in the end he is oppressed by that strong, demanding, and big woman.

There is a trend in Kesey's novel, where always it is women who command, give orders, and direct men's lives. Right from the beginning, not just the Big Nurse is presented, but along we are told of Hardings seducing wife. Harding believes he may give her reasons to "seek further sexual attention" (page 39). Then it is told that McMurphy is charged of raping a little fifteen year old girl. McMurphy claims she said she was seventeen, but it really made no difference since he believes she was willing to do it. There are a couple other women like Billy Bibbit's mom and the nurses, but the spotlight is on Ratched even though they all strain men in one way or the other. As a big breasted middle-aged woman, Nurse Ratched conveys Kesey's perspective of woman perfectly: they dominate men in a social order were men are treated as inferior sinners, at least in the ward. Ratched's indifference and superiority are her notable defenses to men, "even going so far as to step up to the Big Nurse in the hall one time and ask her, if she didn’t mind tellin’, just what was the actual inch-by-inch measurement on them great big of breasts that she did her best to conceal but never could. She walked right on past, ignoring him just like she chose to ignore the way nature had tagged her with those outsized badges of femininity, just like she was above him, and sex, and everything else that’s weak and of the flesh," (page 138). McMurphy expresses his sexual discrepancies towards the Big Nurse to minimize her and appeal as the strongest, but she is ultimately given more reason to continue emasculating men. 

This depiction of woman is certainly the correct one for someone like Nurse Ratched or the woman I mentioned before, but still, not all women are like this. The woman I previously mentioned reminds me of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to great extent because of her resemblance to the Big Nurse of course, but also of  McMurphy. She works up to the same social order of her as the sovereign, but like McMurphy, she uses sexual jargon and insinuations and intimidates her man.  When McMurphy tried to intimidate Nurse. Ratched with his sexual comments, she was given more reason to think that McMurphy was actually mentally ill and not so "ordinary" as she thought before. Women are seen as the fixers and castrators over men since men are numerously mentioned to lose their "nuts" and even self castrate themselves along the novel. Men are weak and at the mercy of women in Kesey's novel, breaking the common or natural order of life.

Literary Haze

Fog: a thick cloud of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere at or near the earth's surface that obscures or restricts visibility  
Fog clouds and blinds humanity. It is uncontrollable by most means and it is just an occurrence of nature. Some days are foggier than others, making things more or less visible. Chief Bromden, the narrator of Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, employs the word fog as a metaphor of his situation. When the Big Nurse and her Black Boys shave Bromden he hallucinates being surrounded by fog in the midst of his paranoid. After getting shaved and put to sleep with medication, Bromden says ,"When the fog clears to where I can see, I'm sitting in the day room. They didn't take me to the Shock Shop this time. I remember they took me out of the shaving room and locked me in Seclusion" (page 8). Before the fog completely blurred Bromden, he was screaming in fear, but after being completely clouded by "fog" he was himself again. His fears were overcome by medication and fog. By not knowing what he lived he evaded suffering. "One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but…" (page 37). Bromden faces two options: stress about being medically treated by the insensitive staff or simply going along with whatever insanity puts before him. Kesey's use of the metaphor of fog gives a much more profound meaning to this word. As of now I see it as a deviation from suffering in unavoidable conditions, like it is in this ward, but one can not simply avoid insanity. Fog could potentially be a cure to insanity or insanity, or maybe the patients' escape of the hospital.

Mood is affected by a variety of factors, one of them being sound. Bromden does not talk a lot with others and fakes being deaf. As he was approached for his shaving he began to scream, but what mood does the fog he faces give to the novel? Even though he was stressed, the fog seems rather comforting for him. Faking deafness Bromden takes a stand of solitude apart the rest of the hospital. Sound is essential for everything, but faking it seems like part of the fog. It is part of avoiding suffering by being talked to. Insanity is accompanied by sound, but Bromden deviates from it. When Bromden was completely blinded by fog, it felt as if he simply gave in and everything went back to normal. He had no need to scream anymore.

Film of the Absurd

Waiting for Godot is widely known for being the exemplary theatre of the absurd tragicomedy, but its film adaptation went too absurd. The final scene portrays Vladimir and Estragon contemplating their lives, their time and their long days. It concludes in a medium-wide shot of Estragon, the tree, Vladimir and behind them the desolate road and the moon. Motionless, Estragon says "Yes. Let's go," and the two friends remain still for about ten seconds. This impacting shot made the whole point of Beckett even more clear than it was by reading the play. The viewer feels uncomfortable and awkward just seeing these two vagrants do absolutely nothing for such a long time. The lack of belief and decision is evident. They have no will or initiative to move along, therefore remain there, probably for the rest of their monotonous lives. Not too often a film has such a boring and disturbing shot, but with such significance. Absurdity is evident in the film with the use of exaggerated statements and stands, equally to Beckett's suggestion that life can be nothing more than what is seen. 

Both the film and the play portray a world like any other. Beckett does not seek to tell a story of heroes and revelations, but rather a story of life. One does not look forward to a monotonous life, but waiting for a god, a special person, an object of value, or any desire, are futile in preventing this type life. In the eyes of absurdity Godot could be anything, and simply watching the end of Vladimir's and Estragon's wait, portrays the bluntness of this wait. The plot could have been the same if Godot was something else. The point lies in the ridiculousnesses that satisfy people. People get lost into useless desires of anything and wait for them, loosing track of everything else, but this is valid. Waiting for nothing or waiting for everything is just the way people go. Watching the film of Waiting for Godot takes almost two hours of one's time and it surely makes its point. Two hours of nothingness are pointless. Two days of Vladimir's and Estragon's life are useless. 

Optimistic Existentialism

Even though very similar, both acts of Waiting for Godot end with the same dialogue, but slightly differential. Act I finishes with Estragon asking "Well, shall we go?" to what Vladimir responds "Yes, let's go" while Act II finishes conversely. Could Beckett suggest that as long as we continue waiting for changes and not make them, we are all the same? Voltaire's picaresque satire Candide, criticized the European civilizations, from their religious aspects, the government, colonization, social status, and the recent uprisings. It ends with optimist Candide saying “but let us cultivate our garden”. After a vast endurance of misfortune and suffering, Candide realized he could not complain about anything or wait for things to change and rather had to work for himself. With whatever he had, he would have to learn to work with to make the best with it. This certainly would be a very interesting lesson that Vladimir and Estragon could learn because they have certain resemblance to Candide. In the end -Estragon or Vladimir- realized they had to go, but they never "went". They made no difference in their own lives or in others lives, but Candide decided to do something for himself. Voltaire and Beckett wrote very different works in every way, but both suggest changes in attitude that can save helpless characters like Candide, Vladimir or Estragon from their own doom.

Before Candide suffered all around the whole world, he embraced the philosophy of "the best of all possible worlds" and that "all is for the best", but failure after failure, Candide realized he needed a change. In all that failure he would at least seek success, but Vladimir and Estragon are still doomed. These two interdependent middle aged men concluded they would leave, but they did not even move. Probably the boring cycle of their life would have kept repeating itself. The failure of Vladimir and Estragon makes me think that Lucky is actually lucky. To the contrary of the others, he has some guidance and task in life. It is not one that one wants to have, but it is more than waiting for nothing. Beckett's message succeeds to deliver and consequently, the play ends on a good note: Vladimir and Estragon are still helpless, but in the eyes of Beckett, we are not.

Strange Style

In The Stranger, Meursault portrays many aspects of existentialism, mostly pertaining to absurdist philosophy. This refers to the failing efforts of humanity to find meaning. To begin, the idea that "existence is essentially absurd" is a major concept conveyed and shown by Meursault form the beginning of the novel, until the end.. "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home:'Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours.' That doesn't mean anything"(page 3). What did it meant for this existentialist that his mother died? Absolutely nothing. She did what everyone eventually does: die. When Meusrault talked with the examining magistrate about his crime he showed no interest in giving life a meaning, but at the same time found no inconvenient with the magistrate putting his life in the hands of God. "That was his belief and if he were ever to doubt it, his life would become meaningless. 'Do you want my life to be meaningless?' he shouted. As far as I could see, it didn't have anything to do with me, and I told him so"(page 69). The concept of existence as an illogicality is pointed out again by Meursault, but with no interest. He has nothing to say about this because it is essentially that, and nothing more. This reminds be of Billy Pilgrim, the main character of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, who embraces an alien belief of existence: everything has happened, will happen, and is happening without any question (Tralfamadorian belief). There is no concrete or fully explained belief of existence and humanity has failed to explain it coherently, so why not believe it is absurd or that it can be lived in four dimensions like the Tralfamadorians?

Life is obstructed by choices and some assume it with greater preoccupation than others. These choices are given importance and for many they create stress. Definitely choices were no stress for Meursault. "I knew I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of the beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness"(page 59). Meursaults worse decision was killing the Arab, but this was no commotion for him After his final sentence was given he thought about escaping, but realized it was absurd and that his ultimate fate was death. He overcame stress and choices by facing whatever he had to without any expectations. One could think Meursault was stoic or brave, but he was boldly existential. 

Existentialism values individual experiences to be "authentic" and find one's own self. To achieve this "we are alone". Meursault chose to be lonely and decided to loose contact with his mother. Whereas she proved to be in company, at least of Thomas Perez. She decided to pass her last days and took a fiance, but Meursault decided to face his last days with acceptance and nothing else. "For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiance,' and why she had played at beginning again"(page 122). Meursault alone made a resolution similar to Maman's, and he was alone. Everything that made him who he was had affected him personally, but he was numb to others influence. Maman never made him think much, or Marie, but Meusrault alone took what he valued from each of these relationships. This "outsider" was careless of others thoughts, emotions, and decisions and that is why he lived a fulfilled life, without regret or oppression. The stranger was free.

Complete Closure

In Camus's The Stranger gaps lead the reader to infer more about who Meursault is and his views about the world. Or rather to infer who he is since Camus does not give too much of who he is. Not till the end of the novel. Meusraults disengagement and indifference to everything around him is evident throughout the whole novel, but his thoughts can be lightly inferred. "I recognized it as the same one that had been ringing in my ears for many long days, and I realized that time I had been talking to myself. Then I remembered what the nurse at Maman's funeral said. No, there was no way out, and no one can imagine what nights in prison are like." (page 81). In Meursaults nights of solitude boredom and reflection in prison, he is revealed more than in the first part of the book.  Why remember what a nurse told him at his mothers funeral? Both seemed irrelevant to him, but the nurse sympathized with Meursaults existential views of the world. Muersault remembered the nurse telling him "'If you go slowly, you risk getting sunstroke. But if you go too fats, you work up a sweat and then catch a chill inside the church.' She was right"(page 17). Both the nurse and Meursalut believe that one way or another death is inevitable and it is the only thing that is certain. Later, Meursault reveals how death will come soon or late, but it will come so there is no difference in living more time or less time. In page 81, before Meursault's trail or his final conversation with the Chaplain, Camus already gave away Meursaults thoughts on everyones destiny. There is nothing missing to Meursaults thoughts when he remembers the nurse, just interpretation. Meursault has contemplated death before his final trail and after and his thoughts on it have always been the same. The difference is that when he gave them all, death was just around the corner.

The novel finishes with Meursault's final wish: "For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate"(page 123). Meursault feels he successfully overcame judgement and society and wants people to remember him with hatred for that. He welcomes with satisfaction whatever is to come, if it is his death or his final moment of happiness. There is no need to read if Meursault was executed or not, he probably would have been executed, but instead the narration keeps suggesting that execution, or judgement, are meaningless. It is who we build of ourselves throughout self experience that matters and not what society makes of us. Why keep on writing about Meursault and his coming death, when the core of who Meursault was and how he overcame judgement were clear? Camus's invitation to infer more about this outsider make him a very complete character, and not the blunt, emotionless character that Meursault is thought to be in the beginning of the novel.